COLUMBUS, Ohio — In a battle of undefeated Big Ten teams, No. 3 Ohio State shut down seventh-ranked Penn State, 20-12, Saturday afternoon.
Former St. Joseph’s Prep teammates Kyle McCord and Marvin Harrison Jr. proved too tough for the Nittany Lions (6-1, 3-1), connecting for the game-sealing 19-yard touchdown with 4:07 left.
McCord was 22-of-35 for 286 yards, 11 completions going to Harrison for a game-high 162 yards to lead the Buckeyes (7-0, 4-0). It was Ohio State’s seventh consecutive win over Penn State since the Lions won the 2016 on a blocked field goal return.
“I want to give Ohio State a ton of credit,” Penn State head coach James Franklin said. “I’m not sure we didn’t just watch two of the best teams in college football, specifically on the defensive side of the ball. You’ve got to give (Harrison) credit. We went into this knowing that we needed to have an awareness and limit the impact of 18 in the game. We had a hard time doing that. The guy’s a heck of a player.”
Ohio State finished with 365 total yards and 22 first downs in the win.
Saturday was a woeful game for the Penn State offense, which finished with a season-low 240 yards and 1-for-16 on third downs in the loss. The Nittany Lions missed in their first 15 third-down plays before a late scoring drive.
“To me, really the story the game came down to third down,” Franklin said. “We weren’t able to stay on the field on third down on offense, which was the biggest difference in the game, in my opinion, so give Ohio State a ton of credit.”
Penn State was able to go down and score at late TD when Drew Allar hit Kaden Saunders in the back of the end zone with 29 seconds to play. The ensuing two-point conversion was broken up and the onside kick was recovered by Ohio State to effectively end the game.
Drew Allar went 18-of-42 for 191 yards and the late touchdown. KeAndre Lambert-Smith finished with six catches for 52 yards.
The sophomore quarterback, who returned to his home state on Saturday, was visibly emotional after the game.
“Obviously it sucks to lose,” Allar said. “It’s not fun to lose at all but we’ve got to take tomorrow and get better. We can only control what we can control. Today was not good enough at all, but if we attack each week and don’t lose faith in each other, we can still be in the position we want to be at the end of the year. We can’t worry about the outside noise. We’ve just got to come together as a team and stick together.”
Allar expressed disappointment that he couldn’t lead the Nittany Lions to a win over the Buckeyes for the veterans on the team, specifically Olu Fashanu and Theo Johnson.
“We’ve been grinding since last January so it sucks that we couldn’t have pull through for some of the older guys in our program,” Allar said. “Two that come to mind for me on the offensive side of the ball are Olu and Theo. Great teammates, great players, and it sucks that we couldn’t get this W for them.”
A strength of the team all season long, the Penn State rushing attack was hemmed up by the Ohio State defense — producing just 49 yards on 26 carries in the game.
Without the running game to loosen up the Ohio State defense as well as the offense’s struggles on third down, Penn State couldn’t put itself in positions to effectively attack.
“Just in general, if you can’t find the run game and relying on the pass, that puts the offense in a tough place,” left tackle Olu Fashanu said. “So now as an offense, we need to just watch the film, figure out where we went wrong and capitalize on our mistakes.”
Defensively, the Nittany Lions stayed connected to the Buckeyes throughout with the game staying at a one-score deficit until the latter stages of the fourth quarter,
The Nittany Lions held the Buckeyes to 79 yards rushing on 41 carries, but the Ohio State passing game, led by McCord and Harrison, hit Penn State for eight pass plays of 15 yards or more.
“We just we just got to execute better,” defensive end Adisa Isaac said. “Obviously it wasn’t enough to win, so I guess we got to do something more on defense, limit them to less points. It wasn’t enough — (allowing) 20 points. We didn’t get enough.”
The Buckeyes led 10-6 at the half, taking the lead on a Miyan Williams 2-yard rushing touchdown with 7:31 left in the second quarter to put Ohio State up 10-3.
Penn State drew closer later in the half as Alex Felkins made his second field goal of the first half to make it 10-6 with 4:16 to go before halftime. Felkins and Ohio State’s Jayden Fielding traded field goals in the first quarter as the Buckeyes drew first blood in Saturday’s matchup of Big Ten heavyweights.
The Nittany Lions managed 161 total yards in the first half, compared to 187 by the Buckeyes.
Allar completed 6-of-17 passes for 91 yards prior to intermission while McCord was 11-of-21 for 125 yards.
Theo Johnson had one catch for 34 yards for Penn State, while Harrison caught five passes for 75 yards to lead Ohio State.
Penn State failed to convert on third down in the first half, going 0-for-7, while Ohio State converted on 3-of-8 attempts.
“It sucks to have a result like this, but we have to wash it and learn from it,” Allar said. “If we don’t learn from it, we’re just fooling ourselves. We have to really be critical of this film and really learn from it and not let this happen again.”
UP NEXT
Penn State hosts Indiana next Saturday at noon on CBS. The game will be Military Appreciation Day at Beaver Stadium.
Ohio State goes on the road to face Wisconsin next Saturday at 7:30 p.m. on NBC.